The End of Learning

 The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that language is but the Instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only.

John Milton, ‘Of Education’ in John Milton: a critical edition of the major works, ed. by Stephen Orgel & Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: OUP, 1991), pp. 226-36 (pp. 227-28).

Japanese Premna

Japanese Premna (Premna microphylla, 豆腐柴).

They were in flower back from mid-March to late May on Yuelu Mountain. These trees as used in bonsai and the leaves can be used to back a edible jelly, similar in texture to tofu.

Schoolmaster Latin

One thing at least is beyond controversy, that Latin was the schoolmaster of both the Romance and German tongues: and the scholar’s practice in a language immutable yet all but infinitely adaptable is invaluable to hobble-de-hoy languages not quite sure what to do with their feet.

Helen Waddell, The Wandering Scholars (London: Constable, 1938; 1927), p. 215.

Sticky Mouse-ear Chickweed

Sticky Mouse-ear Chickweed (Cerastium glomeratum, 球序卷耳).

This picture was taken in mid-March. This chickweed flowerings all over southern China in March and April and fruits over May and June. The whole plant has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to clear away heat and cool the blood; the leaves are regarded as nutritious, though it is a more common feed for livestock than people.

So Much To See

Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic (London: Corgi Books, 1985; 1983), p. 242:

   ‘Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see everything there is to see,’ said Twoflower. ‘And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel,’ he paused, then added, ‘well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course.’

Cerulean Flax-Lily

Cerulean Flax-Lily (Dianella ensifolia, 山菅兰).

Photographed on August 21, in a park in Xiamen. They grow in some remoter parts of Hunan as well (though I think less abundantly than further towards the southern coasts) but I have never found them near to Changsha.

Drinking and Reading

Giovanni Matteo Toscano
‘Petrus Alcionius XCVIII’

Quam vorax dapis heluo fuisti,
Quam meri bromii siticulosus,
Heluo Petre tam vorax librorum
Eras, Castaliae et sititor vndae:
Ut nunquam fueris satur bibendo,
Et nunquam fueris satur legendo:
Sic te Cynthius hinc et inde Bacchus
Suis annumerant, parumque certum est
Cui gratus fueris magis sacerdos.

Yes, you were a voracious glutton for a fine spread,
With quite a thirst, yes, for the riotous god’s own pure wine,
But, Peter, no less voracious a glutton were you
For books, and a thirster after Castalian water:
Just as you were never sated with imbibing,
You were also never sated with reading:
Thus Apollo on the one hand, and Bacchus on the other,
Count you amongst their own, and it is hardly clear
To which of the two you were the more gratifying priest.

Giovanni Matteo Toscano, Peplus italiae (Paris: ex officina Federic Morel, 1578), pp. 59-60. Cited and translated in George Hugo Tucker, Homo Viator: Itineraries of Exile, Displacement and Writing in Renaissance Europe (Geneva: Droz, 2003), p. 167.

Disclisioprocta

Disclisioprocta ssp.? (圆尺蛾属).

Probably an invasive carpet moth from Africa: these two were preparing the next generation in a park in Xiamen on August 21. The genus has been observed across the southern Chinese coast and Taiwan, but the exact species has not yet been determined.

Old Yarns

Through we laugh at old songs and old yarns, nevertheless, they are the yarn with which we weave our picture of the world.

Hope Mirrlees, Lud-In-The-Mist (London: Gollancz, 2008; 1926), p. 47.

Unknown Scoopwing Moth

Over the next year, I hope to make a better acquaintance with the multitudes of moths which dwell all over southern China. Perhaps next year, I will be better able to identify this attractive individual I observed by the river last July.

The Middle Ages

The Renaissance invented the Middle Ages in order to define itself; the Enlightenment perpetuated them in order to admire itself; and the Romantics revived them in order to escape from themselves.

Brian Stock, ‘The Middle Ages as Subject and Object: Romantic Attitudes and Academic Medievalism’, New Literary History, 5.3 (1974), 527-47 (p. 543).

A Special Delight

He poured out hospitable glasses of ouzo, and the conversation switched to the difficulties of finding a market for fish, there was so much competition. There is a special delight in this early morning drinking in Greece.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2006; 1958), p. 42.

Unknown Boletes

Back on July 4, I saw a dozen of these dry jet-black mushrooms protruding sideways from the mossy slopes of Yuelu Mountain. Time was pressing, and I did not examine them more closely: perhaps I will see them again next year and venture an identification; perhaps I missed by chance and they will remain a mystery.

Sleep Song

'Deirín dé'

       Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Tá an bunnán donn ag laḃairt san ḃféiṫ;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Tá an túirnín lín amuiġ san ḃfraoċ.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Ġeoḃaiḋ ba siar le héirġe an lae;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Is raġaiḋ mo leanḃ dá ḃfeiġilt ar féar.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Éireoċaiḋ gealaċ is raġaiḋ grian fé;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Tiocfaiḋ ba aniar le deireaḋ an lae.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Leigfead mo leanḃ ag piocaḋ sméar,
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Aċt codlaḋ go sáṁ go fáinne an lae!

 
'A Sleep Song'

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
The brown bittern speaks in the bog;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
The nightjar is abroad on the heath.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Kine will go west at dawn of day;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
And my child will go to the pasture to mind them.

        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Moon will rise and sun will set;
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
Kine will come east at end of day.
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!
I will let my child go gathering blackberries,
        Deirín dé, deirín dé!

Pádraic H. Pearse, Collected works of Pádraic H. Pearse, 5 vols (Dublin: The Phoenix Publishing Co., 1924), II, pp. 108-11.

Pearse's notes on the poem:

The Sleep Song which I add as a pendant to the song of childhood and death [this refers to the previous poem in the anthology: Pádraig Ó hÉigeartaigh's ‘Ochón! A Dhonncha’] I have pieced together from my recollection of a song; that I heard in my own childhood from the woman to whom I owe all my enthusiasms. Where my memory has failed I; have filled in the; lacunae from a version of the; same lullaby taken down in West Cork by Mr. Amhlaoibh Lynch. The refrain “deirín dé” is the name given by children to the last spark at the end of a burning stick used in certain games. With the thought in stanzas 2 and 3 compare Sappho’s “Hesperus, thou bringest back all that daylight scattereth, thou bringest the lamb and the; goat to fold, thou bringest the infant to its mother.”